It was only a matter of time. Garmin announced today it’s launching Garmin Connect Plus, a premium tier to its app that adds AI-powered insights and a few other expanded features. Existing and new Garmin users will be able to opt in to a free 30-day trial and then choose between a $6.99 monthly or $69.99 annual subscription. All existing health data and features, however, will remain free.
“Developing a premium tier enables us to extend our investment in the Garmin Connect platform, both in terms of features that carry additional cost to provide and also in scaling out our engineering teams to build and maintain these features,” says Garmin spokesperson Natalie Miller.
AI is the big addition to Connect Plus. The feature, dubbed Active Intelligence, will roll out as a beta and purportedly delivers “personalized insights and suggestions” based on your health and activity data. Over time, the insights and goals are supposed to become more personalized to the individual user.
Connect Plus also adds a new performance dashboard that lets users compare custom charts and graphs over a period of time to visualize progress. Subscribers will also be able to view live activity metrics on a smartphone for workouts that were started on a watch. LiveTrack will also be expanded so you can notify selected contacts when an activity starts and a personalized profile page for followers. People using Garmin Coach plans for running and cycling will also receive additional guidance from Garmin coaches. Lastly, there will be exclusive badges and frames for user’s app profiles.
Whether this is enough value to tempt loyal Garmin users is another question — especially since Garmin has been vocal in the past about not paywalling features. Back in 2022, I asked Phil McClendon, Garmin’s project lead for the Venu 2 Plus, about the company’s philosophy regarding subscriptions. At the time, McClendon told The Verge, “We’re not charging you the ability to access your data, and that’s something we will continue to do and that we feel very strongly about.” McClendon is no longer at Garmin, and technically this is still true since all existing features and data will remain free. However, in the years since that conversation, Garmin has occasionally softened its messaging regarding paywalls. At a 2023 press briefing for the Venu 3, Garmin leadership noted that the company had robust subscriptions outside its fitness tracker business but declined to say that there would never be a subscription.
Among fans, the lack of a subscription (outside of mapping features or LTE connectivity) has always been touted as a plus. Especially since Garmin watches are, on average, more expensive than the competition. It’s hard to say how fans will react given that so much will remain free, but generally speaking, introducing subscriptions is a dicey proposition. Oura, for instance, experienced massive backlash when it introduced a subscription with its Gen 3 ring.
Either way, Garmin has faced increased competition these past years. Both Apple and Samsung launched rugged outdoors smartwatches of their own, while Coros has emerged as another popular brand among athletes with long battery life and advanced GPS. At the same time, Garmin’s wearables division isn’t exactly suffering. It recently surpassed expectations for its Q4 earnings, reporting a large 31 percent increase in fitness tracker sales and its stock hitting record highs.
